Stags Leap Wine Cellars

The FAY vineyard is where the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars story began. Established by pioneering grape grower Nathan Fay in 1961, it was the first planting of Cabernet Sauvignon in what is now the Stags Leap District.

At the time, conventional wisdom maintained that the area was too cool for Cabernet Sauvignon. But tasting Nathan Fay’s homemade Cabernet in 1969 was a defining moment for the founder of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Here was land capable of producing a wine that could rival the best in the world. Within a year an adjoining ranch, now known as S.L.V., was purchased and, in 1986, the winery purchased Nathan Fay’s vineyard and named it FAY in his honour. The first vintage of a single vineyard FAY Cabernet Sauvignon was 1990. In 1976 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars famously wins the Cabernet Sauvignon category in a blind tasting staged by Steven Spurrier, an English wine merchant in Paris, among French wine experts between American and French wines. Now known as the famous Judgment of Paris, the tasting’s results are on display in the Fay visitor center.